Letting it linger
This is an excerpt from my book, Organizational Psychology for Managers.
A common decision making trap is allowing the decision to linger after it’s made. This is particularly true with difficult decisions that are not easily reversed. At one company, the decision was made to fire the VP of Software Development. This was a very good decision for a very large number of reasons. But then someone decided that they should really hire someone to take his place before they told said VP that he was being fired. This man was not stupid. He could figure out that something was up even if he didn’t know exactly what. More to the point, though, was that keeping him there while they secretly searched for a replacement meant that they were effectively making the fire/no-fire decision over and over again each day! For each person they interviewed, they had to decide not just whether that person was a good hire, but whether he was good enough to enable them to actually go through with firing the current VP. Months later, the VP was still there and the problems at the company were much worse.
When you make a decision and then find excuses to not implement it, either it’s a bad decision in the first place, or the reason you don’t want to implement it is due to decision fatigue. Either way, you are facing the choice again and again. In one way or the other, you need to execute that decision. When you let it linger in some shadowy twilight world between life and death, you only suck the energy and morale out of everyone.
Organizational Psychology for Managers is an insightful book that reminds the business leader of basic principles of leading a successful organization in an engaging style. As a business owner for over 25 years, I am aware of these principles; however, I need reminding of how these principles work together and impact the energy and success of my company. Throughout the book, the author demonstrates these concepts into a clear perspective by citing examples within other companies which is always a helpful technique and is often eye opening . These are situations that I may not have thought about before. This book holds the reader’s interest from start to finish. I look forward to his next book!
Elizabeth Brown
President
Softeach, Inc.
